Personal cleansing products have traditionally been marketed in a variety of forms such as bar soaps, creams, lotions, and gels. These cleansing formulations have attempted to satisfy a number of criteria to be acceptable to consumers. These criteria include cleansing effectiveness, skin feel, mildness to skin, hair, and ocular mucosae, and lather volume. Ideal personal cleansers should gently cleanse the skin or hair, cause little or no irritation, and not leave the skin or hair overly dry after frequent use. Personal cleansing products are frequently used with, or marketed in the form of, articles that employ a substrate or other implement that carries a cleansing material or is used to deliver a cleansing material to the skin or hair.
Traditional forms of personal cleansing products and articles may be very useful for providing efficacious cleansing and lathering. Such conventional products and articles, however are less suitable for also simultaneously providing other desirable effects such as delivering a skin or hair conditioning benefit. One solution to this problem is to use separate cleansing and conditioning products or articles. However, this is not always convenient or practical, and many consumers would prefer to use a single article which can both cleanse and condition the skin or hair. In a typical cleansing composition or product, the conditioning ingredients are difficult to formulate because many conditioners are incompatible with the surfactants, resulting in an undesirable non-homogenous mixture. To obtain a homogeneous mixture with conditioning ingredients, and to prevent the loss of conditioning ingredients before deposition, additional ingredients, e.g. emulsifiers, thickeners, and gellants are often added to suspend the conditioning ingredients within a surfactant mixture. This results in an aesthetically pleasing homogenous mixture, but often results in poor deposition of conditioning ingredients onto skin or hair because the conditioners are emulsified and not efficiently released during cleansing. Also, many conditioning agents have the disadvantage of suppressing lather generation. Lather suppression is a problem because many consumers seek cleansing articles that provide a rich, creamy, and generous lather.
Therefore, it is seen that conventional cleansing products and articles which attempt to combine surfactants and other materials such as conditioning ingredients suffer from disadvantages inherently resulting from the incompatibilities of surfactants and conditioners. A need clearly exists to develop cleansing systems which provide effective cleansing, effective lathering and yet can also, if desired, consistently provide other benefits such as sufficient conditioning in a single article.
It is also highly desirable to deliver cleansing and preferably conditioning benefits from a disposable, single use article. Disposable articles are convenient because they obviate the need to carry cumbersome bottles, bars, jars, tubes, and other forms of both cleansing and conditioning articles. Disposable articles are also a more sanitary alternative to the use of a sponge, washcloth, or other cleansing implement intended for multiple reuse, because such implements develop bacterial growth, unpleasant odors, and other undesirable characteristics related to repeated use.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide washcloth-like articles for cleansing, and preferably also, conditioning the skin or hair when the articles are used wetted with water and rubbed against the skin or hair.
It is another object of the present invention to provide such cleansing articles which are disposable and intended for single use.
It is another object of the present invention to provide such cleansing articles which are mild to the skin or hair.
It is another object of the present invention to provide such cleansing articles which, upon wetting, are capable of generating especially desirable amounts of lather.